Hosting for Node.js apps done right | Hacker News Reader

Hosting for Node.js apps done right

evennode.com

32 pointskertof40 comments

One question - does it support TCP sockets? I've evaluated a dozen or so Node.js hosting solutions and none (0, null, nil) supported TCP sockets. HTTP/S and WebSockets only. It's ridiculous - a TCP server is a major use case for Node.js and yet if you want to host it, you must configure and administrate your own server (on EC2 or whatever).

We had the same problem. We actually wanted to use Heroku just for pre-production as it was the easiest to deploy / manage, but their TCP socket implementation is such a joke.

We would up just using AWS, and sunk a few days into dev / sys ops.

I would happily pay for a solution to this problem

Could you elaborate a bit on "their TCP socket implementation is such a joke" ? Are you talking about the Ruppell's Sockets addon ? What's your problem with it ? What could be an improvement to it ?

I've also evaluated Heroku and the Ruppell's Sockets, so I can answer this from my point of view. The problem is that it's a workaround solution - all TCP traffic goes through an external server, which is unacceptable for any serious use case. How secure is that external server? What if it goes down? There isn't really anything that can be improved, other than Heroku natively supporting TCP sockets.

I don't think it's ridiculous. I definitely agree that acting as TCP server is one of the major intended use cases for Node.js, but in practice, I'd bet it's such a small fraction of use that most Node hosting companies decided it wasn't worth the financial investment to support that use case.

I wonder how pricing is determined for these offerings? Ie whats the driver for profitability?

My thinking is as follows: if I use a popular IAAS for servers to host customers node.js apps, and if I have instances with 15GB of ram, if I offer application instances that are allocated at most 256MB, then I can fit about 58 application instances on a server (allowing 500MB for the OS). At 6€ an instance (for the intro tier) that's 348€ a month

An EC2 M3.xlarge costs about $81 a month (3 year heavy reserved, amortizing one time payment over 36 months). Today that about 63€ a month. So they intend to make 290€ per server minus additional costs for mongodb hosting.

Does that jive with how you all figure these things?

This sounds like a joke to me.

1- "Hosting for Node.js apps done right": Like everything else is done wrong? That's just weird.

2- What does "designed for cloud" mean?

3- "Free support"? How gullible do you think we are? At 6e/mo, anyone that believes they're getting any kind of "Free support" is wrong. Or else this service is going to fail big time.

Now some constructive criticism: I see "FTP access". But as a dev, I would have liked to see something like FTPS, SFTP or better yet, SSH.

Exactly my thoughts - what about "Unlimited FTP access" - a revolutionarily feature that lets you deploy your app as many times as you want! Sign me up.

SFTP would be a better idea, but documentation says they do support FTPS: http://www.evennode.com/docs/ftp-access#tls

As for criticism... that they charge premium for TLS on custom domains. While this is probably reasonable business decision, it does community a bit of bad service - additional costs for security discourages users from having one. And TLS already has that bar quite high.

Did you really expect a service for node.js to not use meaningless buzzwords? :)

No https and the login form is submitted in plain text. That doesn't really inspire confidence.

What are the others doing wrong that these guys are doing right? From the marketing page, it looks to be as simple as Heroku, except I already have an account there, and most of my apps run for free already.

The things I miss in this "done right" approach:

- Continuous Deployment: automatic load-balancing, proper termination of instances, all seem to apply without documentation or not?!

- Redis: MongoDB for persistent data is fine in many cases but for performance nothing beats a key/value storage (also: some session storage works well with redis)

- Where is it hosted? Europe? Unusable for my location :)

Irony is that their website is powered by PHP rather than node.

In general, how do you determine what software is running on the server side? None of the obvious links are to .php documents and the headers only indicate nginx

Look their cookies. You will see PHPSESSID meaning that session is provided by PHP.

Although, you can do the same with node session module it seems like php anyway.

Plus: http://builtwith.com/evennode.com

A PHPSESSID appears in the cookie.

There's a cookie called PHPSESSID.

That isn't irony.

There seems to be a tendency in the nodejs community to try and use it in any and every situation, regardless of how suitable it is for that situation.

Yeah not really ironic; I mean I would be surprised if node.js wasn't a decent or maybe even a better fit but perhaps they had more technical expertise to handle PHP development and the best way to try and start a business is to release early and often.

Really neat to have FTP access for new JavaScript to NodeJS developers that don't know how to use git yet.

In 2014 ftp access is not a feature, it is an alarm bell to anyone that has any concern at all for security.

I _hope_ that when they write 'FTP' they actually mean '(FTP or) SFTP'. Alas, that's no always true.

They seemingly do:

http://www.evennode.com/docs/ftp-access#tls

That's FTPS, not SFTP, to be precise.

The former is classic FTP sessions secured with TLS on all or some (negotiated at runtime) connections. The latter is a (saner, IMHO) separate protocol traditionally run over SSH session.

Well, then it's high time those folks learn git, isn't it? The basics aren't that difficult.

Or, if not git, then some other version control system. In the 21st century, a VCS really isn't optional.

I have Modulus Node hosting. Deploying is as simple as running "modulus deploy" in the terminal, no git knowledge required :)

Just signed up and tried ftp access but seems like there is a problem. Most probably it's because of randomly generated ftp username

Edit: It's working but needs a time to finish deployment

Don't know how to use Git but you're a NodeJS dev? Really?

"Dev" price:

€ 6 / month

     1 app instance
     256MB RAM
     1GB storage
    Unlimited custom domains
    FTP access
    Free MongoDB database
    Free support

If they also have a transfer limit, then just forget about it :(

Just went looking for that, is a 2 TB Soft limit

[1] http://www.evennode.com/policy/aup

Yes they don't seem to be offering anything above and beyond their competitors, particularly on price. Not even a free tier.

I'm not saying that companies should have a free tier "by rights", only that it's a good way to get you sucked in whilst you develop your app and then when you scale you're unlikely to change provider.

I agree that a Free Tier is the best way to get you to adopt a tool. I'd love to build and test at very small scale, then start paying when I've launched and scaling.

Except for the lack of ssl on the smallest plan, prices and limits seem reasonable.

Too expensive, in my opinion. The dashboard looks nice, simple and clean though.

How does this compare to Nodejitsu? Also, do you have support for socket.io?

another option: http://nitrous.io/ they offer free development boxes

Windows and Mac, but no Linux support for their desktop software :(

does anyone know if bower, grunt, etc. are working?

You'd typically run those and package the results for a deployment. Unless you're using grunt to run your application it's probably unnecessary to offer that.

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